The Behind the Scenes Pic of the Day is your density. I mean… your destiny.

I got a really nice pic for you guys today, from Back to the Future… but not the version you saw. We’re going to focus on a few shots of Eric Stoltz in his brief time as Marty McFly.

The first is a real deal behind the scenes shot of Stoltz and Lea Thompson… who is ungodly hot in this shot. If you want to know my perfect woman is probably an equal measure of Lea Thompson in Back to the Future and Lea Thompson in Howard the Duck.

The second shot is one I dug up a while ago and was waiting for the right time to publish it. The photo isn’t exactly a behind the scenes shot, but a relic of a movie that never was. It’s Stoltz’s version of the fading photo.

I’m a big fan of Eric Stoltz, but I don’t think anybody can deny that Michael J. Fox is the perfect fit for Marty. I once asked Stoltz about it, back before the new Blu-Rays (and even the DVDs) when there wasn’t much talk out there about all this and he was very diplomatic and said that the producers liked him, but he wasn’t a right fit for what they wanted. He said he has accepted it and moved on, but it was quite crushing at the time, naturally.

Still, it’s interesting to see what could have been and I hope you guys enjoy today’s pics.

Thanks to Vivek Bhat for sending the first pick along and for Outatime.net for digging it up in the first place! Click either to embiggen!

If you have a behind the scenes shot you’d like to submit to this column, you can email me at quint@aintitcool.com.

Tomorrow I’ll be at the big Alamo “Inspirations of Super 8” quadruple feature of Slumber Party Massacre, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Scanners and John Carpenter’s The Thing, so tomorrow’s behind the scenes pic will be from a Super 8 influence to commemorate the day! Be good and patient to find out what it is!

The line is that Stoltz was good, but not setting the right tone. He was underplaying Marty, making him moodier than the film needed. That's what Stoltz told me a good 8 or 9 years ago and what they seem to say on the Blu-Ray docs. Could be political, but that's what they say.

Along with Elizabeth Shue and the pre-fatso Kirstie Alley, she was one of my biggest crushes of that time. Them, and April O'Neil from TMNT (and Gadget from Rescue Rangers, but that's getting into weird "furry" territory...).

And it did look like Stoltz was playing the part very straight, taking it seriously. It doesn't seem, to me, that that's right for that movie. There's a lot of silliness in the plot. I think Stoltz -- again in what little I saw of it -- would've taken some of the fun out of it.
But, man, imagine having already filmed some of it, then having it come out and be such a massive hit? Can't help but feel bad for him.

...will never stop giving us something to think about. I love it all. We will always be just a little curious as to how the series would have played with Stoltz in it. I doubt many of us think it would have been better, but it's an interesting "what if...?" mystery. I love that people will always talk about how "the present" compares to the future imagined in the second movie. Doesn't it feel like you can always have a fresh conversation about this series? I am really impressed by how it always seems to be relevant.

like Raiders of the Lost Ark, it was one of the very few movies to get the feeling of Pure Adventure just right and 95% of that had to do with MJ Fox going over the top with the role.
He's the glue that holds everything together as everything goes wild and i don't think Stoltz would even have been able to nail that. It simply would have been a completely different type of movie.
Not that he's a bad actor, he's not. Its just a particular type of chemistry that lit that movie on fire.

that sir, only exists in The Twilight Zone(if you even know what 'The Twilight Zone' was meant to convey).
In actuality, the only timeline that exists is the one we've experienced... and we can never go back again.

I'm very glad Fox took his place. He was simply perfect throughout the series, and as Tailhook says, the glue that held it all together. I sense a bit of character fatigue on Lloyd's part by III, but Fox was still giving his all.

MJ Fox was their first choice. When they needed to start filming, though, he was unavailable, so they had to choose a new actor. After they had started filming with Stoltz, they weren't totally thrilled with how the movie was turning out, and MJ Fox suddenly became available again.

it's not like he got cut from this film and ended up making a living as a jizz mopper in a New York nudie booth. He still became a very well known actor.Jesus he has a unforgettable role in Pulp Fiction for God's sake. That alone earns my respect. Believe me, he has long since gotten over Back to the Future.

Eric was not their first choice. They liked him as an actor, so they hired him - hoping that he would be 'Michael Fox - like'. When the rushes indicated that he wasn't, they moved heaven and earth to get their first choice - Michael Fox

...remember when Doc was thinking of which point in time to go back to visit and witness....and he suggested the signing of the Declaration of Independence? Well there was an episode of Family Ties which plays out just like Back to the Future, where Alex P Keaton dreams he goes back in time and he has to get Thomas Jefferson to write it. This episode came out before BTTF, but is believed to have filmed the same time as BTTF filmed.

you ask twenty people who Michael J Fox is, 20 out of 20 will know. Maybe 1 out of 20 people know who Stoltz is. I'm pretty sure he cries himself to sleep some nights thinking about Back to the Future.

well I can't argue with your "hypothetical poll" since it does not exhist. I can say, however, that they both have made their mark on Hollywood in each of there own unique ways. I am sure Stoltz will always have some "what if" moments about Back to the Future, but I highly doubt he cries himself to sleep at night.

there's actually a pre-filming publicity pic of the two of them together out there on the net if you look for it, but yeah Melora Harris (I think that's her name) was cast originally instead of Lea Thompson. I believe she was recast before filming ever began though.

Point taken. I'm just saying there's no doubt he'd be a bigger star if they hadn't fired him from the film. But then again BTTF most likely wouldn't be what it is if he wasn't canned. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise. If the movie turned out to be a disaster with Stoltz as the lead, he may very well have ended his career, maybe even Zemeckis and Spielberg's too, who knows.

Man I gotta disagree with you again. Back to the Future did not make MJ Fox a star. MJ Fox made Back to the Future a great movie. Stoltz was just miscast plain and simple. If the film was completed with Stoltz instead of Fox, I don't believe it would have been as memorable. But now I am going into hypothetical situations. It is fun to think about what could have been huh?

Dude I didn't get the lead role in Back to the Future and I wasn't even old enough to try out. So deep down inside, I will always hurt that I am not a big name actor because I did not star in BTTF. Stoltz, on the other hand, has had many memorable roles and continues to get jobs today. You asume that he is completely jealous of MJ fox and regrets losing that gig to this day. I believe he is a stonger man than that and has moved on.

Seriously, ever shot and clip I've seen of Stoltz in BttF, he's wearing all black. Combine that with his 'serious' take on the film, and he just seems like a mopey goth kid (probably with a closet full of Cure records). There's no way he woulda been able to pull off that "holy cow, I'm back in the 1950's! Cool!" sense of awe that Fox had.

When Marty Mcfly travels back to 1955 and interferes with the past, it causes unintended consequences in the future. The major apparent change is in the socioeconomic status of Marty's family. Some may see this as a good thing.
However, the way the film is shot, it is clear that Marty Mcfly remembers his poor original family, and doesn't remember his wealthy new family. As a result of this, Marty's fiddling with the past has essentially destroyed his poor original family. And this, friends, is a tragedy.

If BTTF bombed, it would not have done a thing to Spielberg's career. You have to remember the incredible force he was in 85". In 1985 he produced, Fandango, The Goonies, BTTF and Young Sherlock Holmes, he also directed The Color Purple and Amazing Stories debuted that year. If BTTF was a disaster the filmmakers would've been disappointed but they would still have careers.

gods that girl was hot!
As a teenager I watched Howard The Duck more times than was healthy, as well as BTTF, I had the soundtracks on cassette and nearly wore them out!
But Lea, hmm, Lea, hard to say just how gorgeous that girl was, and to a young man like myself, well, feck, find myself getting all "anxious" just thinking about her, to paraphrase Beetlejuice!
She was pretty hot in Caroline In The City as well, just to say.

gods that girl was hot!
As a teenager I watched Howard The Duck more times than was healthy, as well as BTTF, I had the soundtracks on cassette and nearly wore them out!
But Lea, hmm, Lea, hard to say just how gorgeous that girl was, and to a young man like myself, well, feck, find myself getting all "anxious" just thinking about her, to paraphrase Beetlejuice!
She was pretty hot in Caroline In The City as well, just to say.

Ask any high school-aged kid from poor family if he thinks it would be a tragedy to wake up one morning to find that suddenly:
Your dad is wealthy and successful
Your mom is no longer an alcoholic
Your brother is an executive instead of a Burger King wage-slave
Your sister is no longer an overweight crybaby
I think I could live with that kind of tragedy.

Since there was a change in circumstances, Marty no longer shares the memories of his wealthy family. He wasn't there when his family went on ski trips to Aspen, or when they hung out playing golf at the country club. So, his wealthy parents and siblings are basically different people. It's almost as if he has transferred between alternate universes, SLIDER style, and has lost his family for ever.
I think the fact that Eric Stoltz knew this when he was so young is an indication of the extent of his intelligence. Perhapd Speilberg and Zemicks were just annoyed at how smart he was.

Not that I'm asking for a remake. But the way to do it would be to play off the humour that what was the "present" of the original is now the "weird retro past when everything was soooo different", and what was the "imagined future era" is now our present day, and completely different.
No flying cars and whatnot. But people in 1985 thought thats what 2015 would be like, just like people in the 1955 thought 1985 would be some crazy star trek like futurama.

BACK TO THE FUTURE actually WAS a tragedy: Marty's dad becomes a best-selling author, Marty's mom is a MILF, his brother Dave is some kind of executive, Wendie Jo Sperber seems to being doing okay with the guys, Marty now has a monster truck ... yet they all continue to live together in that shitty little house under the electrical tower and they've somehow managed to hire Biff -- the dude who almost raped Lorraine in high school and is apparently still harboring a secret grudge against George -- as their houseboy. Plus, if Marty is now upper-middle-class and has a well-adjusted life, would he really still be hanging out with some wacko old inventor dude or have a rock band that sounds suspiciously like Huey Lewis & The News or be dating Jennifer, who I'm sure was only with him to piss off her parents? That's not even factoring in Part II, where, apparently, not even this leg-up in life prevents Marty from becoming a middle-aged office drone whose entire future is ruined because he lost some dexterity in his hand and can't play guitar, or his ugly-assed kids (one of whom is apparently semi-retarded), or that instead of worrying about saving Marty's kids, maybe Doc should have either prevented Marty from getting fired, or, more to the point, maybe helped prevent that easily-preventable car accident that fucked up Marty's life to begin with. And what about those terrorists? Wouldn't they know they hadn't killed Doc Brown when they read about him being honored in the newspaper?Would he be living with a death sentence over his head for the rest of his life? Most of all, there's an overarching implication that, whether they got the sports almanac back or not, Fifties' Biff is now fully aware that Doc Brown has a time machine in 1985 and that Biff should be aware that his life was completely fucked up as a result of it.

And they might do it, if Zemeckis would allow . . . that would make a lot more sense than trying to rotely update the franchise. I'd love mix up, where it's 2015 and the hero goes back to 1985, then back to 1955, then back to 1925 . . . something that completely messes with the continuity of the original series.

In 2015. That was just a cool way to end a underdog movie that they had no expectation of turning into a trilogy. Once they had done it, they had to kind of stick with it . . . Although they got the newspaper wrong, what with the upcoming visit of Queen Diana to the United States and whatnot.

Really? Marty is freaked out to discover Doc Brown died in 1885? Did he not process that he would somehow stumble over Doc's grave regardless of when or how he died, considering he was stuck seventy years in the past in a time and place where getting a foot splinter could result in amputation? Why didn't Marty simply go back to the night Doc Brown accidentally split in the time machine in the first place, have him land the fucking thing before the lightning strike, watch in wonderment as the 1885 Delorean and the other 1955 Marty suddenly vanished and hightail it back to 1985 with no real harm done? Hell, at least go back to 1985 and get that fucking bulletproof vest from Part I to give to 1885 Doc (and maybe a couple of Uzis).

I remember seeing BttF at the theatre at the age of 8. I still love it & cannot wait to meet Chris Lloyd & Lea Thompson.
It was great to finally see Stoltz's scenes on the BD release but I agree with previous comments - the film wouldn't have been the same without MJF.

Michael J. Fox's availability didn't change, it's just that Speilberg convinced Gary David Goldberg (Family Ties Priducer) to finally allow MJF to do the movie telling him how it would be great for Faily Ties to have it's star be in a major summer movie.

Never mind that: how was he able to successfully program and operate the fucking time machine in the fist place? The first movie pretty much established that he wasn't smart enough to steer a car out of the way of a manure truck, not fall for a sucker punch setup or even come up with a witty retort from the Fifties without fucking it up. Hell, for that matter, how did he even figure out a plan that involved changing the course of his personal history? Sure, he overheard Marty talking about it, but how much of that would he have actually processed? Moreover, how the hell did he kill himself in such a goofy goddamn way (by breaking his cane and stabbing himself with the jagged end)? And did no one notice the blood that I'm pretty that wound up spilling all over the seat, the outside of the car or the street next to the car? And why didn't he tell young Biff to just "shoot Marty McFly or Doc Brown on sight", instead of being all cryptic and going "someday, a kid or an old man might come around asking about the almanac"? Wouldn't that have saved a lot of trouble? What about 2015? Wouldn't that have changed the minute old Biff went back in time? And FINALLY (and most obviously), why not just give young Biff the fucking TIME MACHINE, instead of the almanac?!? I mean, sports scores and getting rich is great and all, but if you're gonna be a villain, why not go for broke and give your younger self the ultimate weapon to reshape history to your whims with? At least they got that part right with the BTTF ride ...

One in which Marty goes back in time to find out that he changed the timeline just enough so that his parents had a different child instead of him. He could have seen his alternate brother doing the things he had done.

Old Biff didn't die because he stabbed himself. He broke the cane off in the Delorean (leaving the crucial clue for later) hitting himself in the stomach, and getting winded, but it doesn't show that he died because of that hit. The original version of that scene showed Biff collapsing and then fading away, BECAUSE he had changed the timeline and cause himself to no longer exists in 2015 (purportedly because alt-boob-job-Lorraine would've shot him dead at some point in the mid-90s.)

I recently read some trivia on BTTF over at IMDb while watching a marathon, and one bit of trivia said that in the original scene after Biff returns the car, they actually shot him disappearing from existence, signifying that in the alternate reality, Biff died before he got to that age. They cut the actual scene, though.

...he looks like someone who would have fucked his own mother if given the chance.
I call it the Jeff Goldblum Principal. An actor who just has a face that means you can never quite trust them to be pure of heart, as it is all too easy to picture them fucking someone over for their own benefit and personal gain.

Lea Thompson: Hottie then, hottie now. Love her. So sexy it is ridiculous.
BTTF: one of the most fun, rewatchable movies ever made.
The trilogy: it gets bumpier in parts 2 and 3, but I still love the whole package, as a package.
I've only seen very small bits and pieces of the Stoltz footage, but you can see that he was playing it much more for drama than laughs. Fox did indeed save this movie.
But you have to give Eric credit: he is a damn handsome man.

Zemeckis has said that once MJF came down with Parkinsons and would not be able to act in a sequel that he would not do it without him. He owns the rights to the characters so no one can do it without him.
I'm sure Universal would give him a dumptruck full of money to do a sequel or remake but it's not about the money.
Respect.

Only because it's the director's job to make sure the actor is setting the right tone. So, if the actor is playing it too serious, that's the director's fault not the actor's.
I think they originally wanted MJF, and initially couldn't figure a way to make the scheduling work. However, during production, MJF's schedule became more flexible (through whatever means) and they went with the actor they originally wanted.
I wish they'd just fess up to this, even though it makes them seem a bit sleazy. Because I think it makes them seem more sleazy to keep throwing Stolz under the bus.

Enough to release a 'Back to the Future: The Eric Stoltz Cut'? A completely alternative version of the film pieced together from unused footage, a bit like 'Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut'? I imagine there would be quite a few scenes missing, but it would still make for fascinating viewing.

Really? Wouldn't 2015 have just suddenly changed to BiffWorld the minute he went back in time? And I don't care what actually happened or what was cut from the movie, Old Biff looks like he stabbed himself in the gut with the jagged end of his broken cane (never mind the utter paradox of "if Old Biff had gone back to 1955 and changed his past, then he never would have discovered the Delorean in 2015 and therefore never would have gone to the past, thus negating everything Old Biff had done to begin with").</p><p>
A lot of the problems with Parts II and III stem from the fact that most of both movies were just padding, since they were both part of the PARADOX script, the actual original sequel to BACK TO THE FUTURE that they had to break up when the 2015 stuff was too expensive to justify in the context of a movie that goes between 2015, an alternate 1985, 1955 (which I don't even think was in the PARADOX script) and 1885. I wish they'd just gone for it, though, because I think it would have been one great sequel instead of two "just okay" sequels that only really get rewatched because everybody loved the fist one so much. Imagine if the first one had been broken up into two movies with Marty unsure whether or not Lorraine would wind up being his mom or if young Doc Brown would be able to get him back to 1985 at the end of Part I, meanwhile, having to pad out the running time with an extended subplot about Lorraine's family or teaching George how to play football or a twenty-minute skateboard chase scene with Biff at an amusement park, and that's pretty much what happened with the sequels.

It doesn't really matter whether you don't buy the Stoltz "not setting the right tone thing". It's a simple fact.
Zemeckis has said in an interview on the 25th anniversary DVD that as the director, he had to approach Spielberg (the producer) and essentially say "Uhhhh, boss? We just wasted 5 weeks worth of filming with Stoltz."
And as "emperor_was_a_jerk" correctly already said above, Fox's schedule didn't suddenly become more flexible. When everyone realized Stoltz wasn't gonna cut it, Spielberg begged the Family Ties producer to let Fox do double duty filming Ties and BTTF.
End of story.

One more thing: I get that Stoltz may not have been right for the role, but if it was just a "tone" issue, why didn't Zemeckis oh, I dunno, DO HIS JOB AS DIRECTOR and work with him to get the right tone?!? Like take him aside and say "Listen, Rocky Dennis, I keep hearing about you telling everybody that this is some kind of fucking 'tragedy', and maybe you didn't get to the part in the script where you trick Biff into smashing his Studebaker into a manure truck and covering himself with cowshit yet, but this is a wacky family comedy sci fi adventure and we're trying to make money here. Time to do what we're paying you to do and make with the goofy shit!"</p><p>
Also, and this doesn't get brought up a lot, but the ORIGINAL BACK TO THE FUTURE script wasn't quite as goofy or as optimistic as what ended up on screen, though the ending, in which Marty makes it back to the future and all the world's problems are resolved by COCA-COLA, is kind of out there. If memory serves, either Hill Valley or the entire world gets blown up by nuclear war before Marty and Doc Brown go back in time. Google that shit! So who knows what changes were in place when Stoltz was filming? Maybe he was actually just doing what he was told and everybody decided to go wacky, instead?

Dude, you gotta chill out a little. In all my years here at AICN, I don't know if I've ever witnessed someone getting quite so bent out of shape about such unimportant shit.
And I know you said you "don't care what actually happened or what was cut from the movie", but the simple fact of the matter is that Old Biff didn't stab himself in the gut with the jagged end of his broken cane.
Sorry, just had to throw that in there.

slone 13: er ... I think YOU'RE getting a little bent out of shape; if you're taking anything I've been saying on here with the slightest bit of seriousness, especially with "all your years on AICN" (not something I'd advise boasting about in mixed company) you might possibly need a tail winch to yank that rather large stick out of your ass.</p><p>
I stand corrected on the original BACK TO THE FUTURE script, though -- Coca Cola POWERED THE TIME MACHINE, Doc Brown and Marty ran a bootleg video pornography ring out of Doc's lab, Hill Valley was essentially modern-day Cleveland, sans the whimsy and the nuclear explosion was essentially how Marty gets back to the present (at a nuclear testing facility). Also, rock 'n roll is somehow wiped from history.

She was probably the first film crush I had as a kid. I blame Lea Thompson in Howard the Duck for every "bad girl with a good heart" that I chased after like a moth to a light bulb since the age of 13.

She was one of the good ones, that's for sure, but I kept lumping her in with Molly Ringwald, Demi Moore and Madonna of that era as "yeah, yeah, everybody wants to nail her!" She still looks pretty good, but I don't think she'd need that extra makeup to look like Marty's mom today. Come to think of it, neither would Elizabeth Shue (as "old Jennifer"). Sad that Thompson looked her hottest in HOWARD THE DUCK, though ...

Zemeckis has said on more than one occasion that the Eric Stoltz incident was completely his fault and I don't recall Zemeckis, Gale or Spielberg ever throwing Stoltz under the bus. If anything they praised his acting abilities but he just wasn't giving what they wanted and it became increasingly clear that he had been miscast through no fault of his own.
As for MJF, it wasn't that his schedule became more flexible, it was that his Family Ties producer gave him permission to do the movie as long he was doing it around their schedule which meant shooting late at night till the wee hours of the morning and shooting the daytime scenes on Saturdays and Sundays.

It's always struck me as odd that they cast Stoltz when they couldn't get MJF to begin with. It seems like if they wanted MJF and couldn't get him, they would look for a "MJF Type." Stoltz isn't that. It's not just the BTTF films. I can't picture either actor in the other actor's roles. You wouldn't cast Fox as the kid in MASK or as the Cylon creating father in CAPRICA. You wouldn't cast Stoltz in Fox's other comedic roles either. There might be some dramas where they might overlap, but even then their approaches would be so completely different. It's like the story about Michael Keaton originally being cast in Jeff Daniels' role in THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO. And then Woody Allen changed his mind after shooting for awhile. Why would he cast Keaton in that role to begin with? Nothing about Michael Keaton says "30's Matinee Idol". He has a bit of a Cagney-esque quality and you could see him in a screwball comedy role maybe. But the CAIRO character isn't that kind of actor either. It's just weird.

sorry I know I've repeated that line from the magazine I've gotten that from a couple of times, but I always thought it was funny. btw do bts pics always have to be movies? cuz maybe someone can dig up some pics of Jeff Yagher (spl?) as tom hanson instead of Johnny Depp on 21 Jump Street. Yes that's right, tom hanson...the name existed in pop culture before 500 days of hummers.

"One in which Marty goes back in time to find out that he changed the timeline just enough so that his parents had a different child instead of him. "
Of course, given the disruptions to 1955 that occurred, this is EXACTLY what we ought to expect, i.e. the chances of Marty being born in the changed timeline (and indeed his siblings) are infinitesimal. In a narrative universe where it's possible to change the future, the mere act of time travel ought to be sufficient to set the future off on a significantly different course, because of chaos effects.
BTTF's metaphysics are, frankly, a total mess, but nobody really cares much, because it's a comedy, and a really, really good one.

Agreed! You can sit here for hours and nitpick the things that are out of whack with the time travel physics behind BACK TO THE FUTURE and the sequels (and I believe I did just that, sigh ...), but it's like nitpicking the equally-abyssmal physics behind TERMINATOR and TERMINATOR 2, or BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, because the movies manage to be entertaining enough that you don't actually ponder the mistakes until years later, once the initial "wow" factor wears off. And even then, you can still go, "Eh, it's still a good movie!"</p><p>
As far as the physics behind BACK TO THE FUTURE are concerned, though, I submit that there's actually some merit to it. You can't change time, it's an immutable dimension. Once you go forward a second, the last second is gone, destroyed by Stephen King walnut Pac-Men, whatever. In BTTF Part II, Doc Brown explains that, when history is changed, a new timeline is created that branches off from the original in some way. So, every time they fuck something up in the past, present or future, they create a new universe. How they manage to get back to the original (or the one where Marty has a bitchin' monster truck, anyway) at some point is anyone's guess. The only people that remain constant seem to be Marty and Doc Brown. In other words, there's no "other them", just "other universes" that get created around them. The whole of creation is their prison bitch. In Universe A, the shitty universe, Marty and Doc Brown are no longer there and George McFly is still one step up from a disability check-collecting gimp. In Universe B, George McFly is a best-selling author and Marty gets to go off and have sex with Jennifer on the camping trip with his buddy Flea. In Universe C, Biff has turned most of the free world into Las Vegas/Detroit. But somehow, Marty and Doc Brown are unchanged in any way. They've created at least four or five complete realities for themselves but only got to live one of them.

"How they manage to get back to the original (or the one where Marty has a bitchin' monster truck, anyway) at some point is anyone's guess. "
Yes indeed. In a branching timeline structure it shouldn't be possible to get back to your original timeline.
BTTF seems to pick and choose between at least three separate models along the way, certainly when considered as a trilogy. The first movie is primarily a rewritable timeline structure, where you actually alter the future from which you came rather than create a new branch. (If this weren't the case, Marty couldn't endanger his own existence.) Yet there are moments that use tropes from single timeline loop stories, such as when Goldie Wilson gets the idea to run for mayor from Marty, and Marty seems to be a major factor in the birth of rock and roll.
The Terminators I shall leave aside here. I am notorious for my views that T1 is metaphysically excellent and T2 is incompatible with it. But that discussion's getting pretty old now.
I actually love Bill and Ted's...the police station scene is a wonderful piece of deliberate bootstrapping, a genuine moment of class in what is a great fun movie.
As an aside, is it a general rule that we're more forgiving of inconsistency and implausibility in comedy than in other genre types?

It's funny you wrote that, because everytime I think of Eric Stoltz I think of him as the creepy guy who molested his own daughter in The Butterfly Effect, and the creepy teacher getting head from his student Shannyn Sossamon in Rules of Attraction.

misterdarcy: Absolutely! Though it's not really clear whether BACK TO THE FUTURE is a "comedy" or just "light-hearted". The science of the original flick seems sound (and is integral to the plot), until you start questioning why Marty alone is immune to the changes in time and somehow remembers the original timeline he erased. But in the mid-Eighties, every lower-middle-class kid dreamt of somehow overcoming adversity and the snobby rich kids and getting a bitchin' ride, a hot girlfriend and some kind of slam dunk against a bully (see also: WEIRD SCIENCE, THE KARATE KID or anything with William Zabka as the bad guy, TEEN WOLF, BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, THE GOONIES, LUCAS, RUDY, BETTER OFF DEAD, REVENGE OF THE NERDS, LOST BOYS and, possibly, HARDBODIES), so the initial reaction was always "Hey, wow, what a great idea!"</p><p>
The worst part is, they COULDN'T remake (or even initially release) BACK TO THE FUTURE today. I think the world's grown too cynical for a clean-cut sci-fi fantasy about some n'er-do-well going back in time to Squaresville and accidentally fixing his entire future. They pretty much already tried riffing on it with HOT TUB TIME MACHINE, which got everything that made BACK TO THE FUTURE right absolutely dead wrong, but it's probably not as symptomatic of bad filmmaking as it is being "This is what a BACK TO THE FUTURE remake would have to be to appeal to today's kids." Pretty sad.</p><p>
I don't think Stoltz would have been completely wrong for the role -- he essentially pulled a McFly in SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL -- but he comes across as more proactive and less reactive, which is what Fox nailed so well. I agree that he probably would have come off like he was trying to conceal his mommy-boner for Lorraine every time she tried to jump on him, which probably would have edged the movie in an uncomfortable direction, or that he was secretly plotting to murder -- or talk his dad into murdering -- Biff. But wouldn't having a mopey blue collar kid go back to the ultra-optimistic Fifties and come back with a better attitude and the rich stuff have been more compelling? Fox's version doesn't really go through any kind of change, he comes back and he's still worried about nailing his girlfriend, his ride and getting his band going. Who knows? On the plus side, they'll hopefully never attempt BACK TO THE FUTURE IV: QUEST FOR THE CRYSTAL SKULL.

Universal does own the rights to BTTF - Not Zemeckis and Gale. This is why they agreed to come back and do the sequels. They knew that if they didn't, Universal would simply hire someone else to. They explain this in the Q + A session on the DVDs.

I think the key difference is that Fox is better at playing gregarious, extroverted characters, whereas Stoltz specializes more in introverts. Stoltz's mannerisms suggest thoughtful worry, that he's the kind of guy who'll spend a lot of time on his own thinking things through. Fox suggests he'll deal with problems in a different way: he can convey stress, but he comes across as a guy who'll seek decisive action, and do so by engaging others as part of his plan. Stoltz is a thinker, but Fox is a leader.
Fox was clearly better-suited to the role of Marty McFly.